


















































































































































































COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 











































^AXJXJL, 


LIFE IN 
AN ANT HILL 




COMPILED BY WORKERS OF THE 
WRITERS' PROGRAM OF THE WORK 
PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION IN THE 
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA 


JUNIOR PRESS BOOKS 

albertXwhitman 

vJ-CO 

CHICAGO 1940 



YEua.7 

.SiL'Z 


PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION 
State-wide Sponsor of the 
Pennsylvania Writers' Project 

FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY 
John M. Carmody, Administrator 

WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION 
F. C. Harrington, Commissioner 
Florence Kerr, Assistant Commissioner 
Philip Mathews, State Administrator 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 

Co-sponsored and copyrighted, 1940, by Division of Extension Education 


^ ucat * on ’ Phi la delphia 


cl) 


NOV-11940 




flADVOTniun AnnvMM 


FOREWORD 


Life in an Ant Hill is the thirteenth of thirty 
booklets in the Elementary Science Series. 
It was prepared by the Philadelphia Unit of the 
Pennsylvania Writers' Project, sponsored by 
the Pennsylvania Department of Public Instruc¬ 
tion. 

This booklet, written by Mark Bartman, was 
edited by Katharine Britton of the Editorial 
office. 

Acknowledgment is made to John W. Cad¬ 
bury, 3rd, Associate Curator of Insects, the 
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 
and to W. L. Brown, Jr., American Entomo¬ 
logical Society, for acting as consultants to 
assure accuracy of the text and illustrations. 
It must be emphasized that the habits, be¬ 
havior, castes, and activities described in this 
book are actually not those of any one species, 
but are combined in one here only to simplify 
and dramatize. 

Illustrations were prepared by Mary Procopio 
of the Pennsylvania Art Project, under the 
direction of Michael Gallagher. 

C. C. Lesley 

State Supervisor 



























LIFE IN AN ANT HILL 


-Anyone out walking — in fields, in 
parks, even on city streets — is likely to 
be stopped sometimes by a crowd of in¬ 
sects scurrying across his path. Ants! 
One step more and dozens of little lives 
would be crushed out. The ants move 
in streams, like people at a country fair, 
or workmen swarming out of a factory. 

How fast they go! They do not stop 
even for a moment. But where are they 
going? What are they doing? Into the 
grasses they scurry, or along the pave¬ 
ment cracks and into the ground, until 
they are lost to sight. 

What fun it would be to follow them 
for a while, to find out how they live! 
And it is not so hard to do this as we 
may think. For some men have spent 

5 


many years studying the ants to find 
out all about them and their way of 
living. So, even though the ant and 
his fellows are out of sight in the grasses 
now, we can follow them in our imagi¬ 
nation. In our imagination we can go 
right into the ant hill if we wish. 

PICTURE OF AN ANT 

But first, let us push aside the grasses, 
pick up one little ant, and put it under 
some kind of magnifying glass that will 
make it look much bigger. 

The ant’s body is divided into three 
parts. There’s the head. Then there’s 
the chest. Behind that is the part that 
contains all the digestive system. This 
is much larger than the rest of the ant. 
It is joined to the chest by a very tiny 
waist. 

The ant has no bones inside its body. 
It does not need them, for it is covered 
with shell. This protects the body, just 

6 



1. BIG WORKER 2 . LITTLE WORKER 3 . SOLDIER 

4 . PRINCE 5 . PRINCESS 6 . QUEEN 


as armor protected the knights of old 
when they went into battle. The armor 
is in sections, except on the head, and 
along the sides there are holes. Through 

7 



these the ant breathes. The sections of 
armor move apart and together, just as 
an accordion does. This movement lets 
air into the body, and then squeezes it 
out. It is just like breathing from the 
hips! 

On each side of the head are many 
eyes, bunched together like pinheads on 
a pin cushion. But the ant cannot roll 
them up and down or from side to side. 
It cannot move them at all. In fact, it 
cannot even see very well with them. 
Some kinds of ants cannot see at all. 

Poor eyesight seems like a bad thing 
to us, for people depend more on sight 
than on any other sense. But that is 
not true of the ant. The ant depends 
mostly on touching and smelling things. 
On its head are two long feelers, which 
it uses to find out what is going on about 
it. It keeps touching the ground with 
them as it runs along, feeling its way 
much as we do with our fingers in the dark. 


The ant also smells with its feelers. 
Sometimes it lifts its head and waves 
them high in the air. Perhaps danger 
is near. Perhaps there is the good smell 
of food. 



EVERY ANT IS CAREFUL TO KEEP ITSELF WELL-BRUSHED, 
CLEAN, AND TIDY. 


When the ant is placed back on the 
ground, away it goes into the grasses 
again. But once safe, it stops to clean 
itself, for there is dust on its body. Its 
legs are covered with hairs, and with 

9 




























these it can brush and comb itself very 
well. 

Keeping very clean is one thing that 
ants never neglect. Since they live 
underground, they cannot permit either 
their bodies or their homes to get dirty. 
If they did, they might become sick and 
die. Even the ant colony itself might 
grow smaller and die out at last. Ant 
colonies sometimes last longer than a 
man’s life time, and one reason for this 
is the fact that the ants are so clean. 

OUTDOOR WORK 

Dusted and cleaned, the ant hurries 
after its fellows. It must get back to its 
job as quickly as it can. Like all worker 
ants, it is driven by something inside 
itself to toil all the time. It does not 
know such a thing as play. 

All the ants are moving very fast. 
Suddenly they stop. Their path is 
blocked by a trickle of water. Ants can- 
10 



TELLS OF ANOTHER WAY. 







































































































































































































































































not swim. Will they give up the trip? 
No, they begin to hunt. They find small 
grains of sand and toss them into the 
water. The grains pile up. Soon there 
is a perfectly dry bridge, and across this 
they march. 

At last they reach a cluster of beautiful 
flowers. Up the stems they climb, out 
upon the leaves. Feelers wave excitedly. 
There on the leaves are a number of 
little green insects, even smaller than 
the ants. They have long, sharp, hollow 
beaks, which they push into the leaves 
of the plant to suck out the juices. In 
their bodies this turns to a sweet syrup, 
called honeydew. 

At once the ants begin to stroke the 
little green insects, and as they do this, 
out come tiny drops of honeydew. The 
green insects are really ant cows, and 
the ants who milk them are dairy maids! 

Every time a drop of honeydew oozes 
out, a tongue-like thing shoots from an 
12 


ant’s mouth to lap up the sweet. But 
the honey is not really being eaten, 
though the ant swallows it. When 
people swallow food, it goes into their 
stomach to be digested. But when an 
ant swallows food, there are two things 
that can happen to it. For the ant has 
two stomachs. One of the stomachs 
digests food to give strength to the body. 
The other is like a store house. The 
food can be kept there until it is needed. 

Later the ant can bring food out of this 
extra stomach, then swallow it again 
and send it into the real stomach. Or 
the ant can bring up the food and give 
it to another ant that needs it. So this 
stomach is sometimes called the public 
stomach. Whatever food the ant carries 
there is for public use. Ants share 
everything they have. 

Though the dairy maid ants are eating 
some of the honeydew from the cow in¬ 
sects, they are storing most of it to take 

13 


back to the ant hill. They lap it up 
until the back part of their bodies is 
swollen to a great size. Now they are 
ready to go. But they are not going to 
leave the cows here. The cows are soft 



and helpless. If they were left alone, 
there might be no cows when the ants 
returned for more honeydew. 

So the ants pick up the cows carefully 
in their strong jaws, and climb down 
the stem of the plant with them. They 

14 




are going to take them to plants nearer 
the ant hill. When the cow insects have 
sucked most of the juice from one plant, 
the ants will move them to a fresh plant. 
In this way the ants make certain that 
the cows will be able to keep on giving 
honeydew. Of course, this is very bad 
for plants, because the ant cows destroy 
the plant leaves. 

As the dairy maid ants march back 
toward the ant hill with their cows, they 
pass other ants working at other tasks. 
Some of the ants are climbing grasses 
that are taller to them than the tallest 
trees are to us. They are nipping off 
seeds from the grasses, and carrying 
them away to be stored for later use. 
Sometimes the seeds are much larger 
than the ants themselves. But ants have 
strong bodies and strong jaws. Those 
jaws must be used for biting, carrying, 
digging, grinding, — even fighting, when 
the ant must protect itself. 


15 


THIEVES 

At last the dairy maid ants are close 
to the ant hill. Again it can be seen 
that the ants are very clean. The ground 
around their home is not littered with 
trash. If one crumb or a bit of leaf is 
dropped, the first ant that passes picks it 
up and carries it to the trash heap nearby. 

Some ants are coming out of the hill 
to go about their tasks. Others are 
moving toward it from many directions. 
Almost all of the returning workers carry 
seeds or other food in their mouths. They 
stream up long clean pathways paved 
with bits of stone. 

But though the ants do not know it, 
the food for which they have worked so 
hard is in danger. Stranger ants are 
lying in wait for them! Certainly these 
strangers are up to no good. 

Now a worker ant coming out of the 
ant hill stops one of those going in. The 
returning ant is bringing up a drop of 
16 


honey from its public stomach, and the 
other ant is ready to take it. The ant 
has been working hard and it is hungry. 

Suddenly, out darts one of the stranger 
ants. It snatches the drop of honey from 
between the two before the hungry one 
can take it, and runs away. 

Bandits! That’s what the stranger 
ants are. Ant bandits! They wait near 
the entrance to the ant hill, knowing 
that many ants laden with food will pass 
by. These bandit ants do not work for 
themselves. They live on the work of 
others. 

But the worker ants do not always 
chase the bandits. They may go right 
on with their work. Up the pathway 
they hurry. At the top of the hill is the 
entrance to their city. 

INTO THE ANT HILL 

At the doorway stands a soldier ant, 
a guard. A real soldier ant has much 

17 


bigger and stronger jaws than a worker 
ant. Among ants that have no special 
soldiers, the worker ants must do the 
work of soldiers. They must protect the 
ant hill from invasion and fight off 
enemies. 

The guard taps almost all the ants as 
they come up to the doorway. Its feelers 
go over them lightly as a detective goes 
over a criminal to see if he’s hiding a 
gun. But the guard is not searching for 
weapons. It is looking for strange smells. 
That is how the ants tell friends from 
enemies. All ants who belong in this 
ant hill have the same smell, while 
strange ants have different smells. The 
guard will not let any stranger in. 

The stranger does not always mean 
harm. Sometimes it is simply lost, and 
is seeking another home. For all ants 
must live with other ants. They cannot 
live alone. If an ant loses its home and 
cannot find another, it will die. But the 
18 


guard cannot take chances. He turns 
all strangers away. 

Into the ground the ants go, into the 
dark tunnel that leads down, down, to 
the rooms of the ant city. The city may 
extend from several feet to several yards 
into the earth. Every bit of this had 
to be dug out by the little ants, with 
their strong jaws. And then all the loose 
dirt had to be carried out to leave the 
tunnels and chambers clear. Think 
what a task this must have been! Now 
the ant home is big enough for a colony 
of thousands of ants. 

THE QUEEN 

The ants pass room after room. At 
one doorway some of them stop to look 
in for just a moment. This is the 
chamber of the Queen, the mother of 
this ant colony. All the ants that live 
here are her children. Sometimes in an 
ant hill there is more than one Queen 

19 





































































































WORKER ANTS ARE CLEANING THE QUEEN AND FEEDING HER. AT THE SAME TIME THEY 

ARE KEEPING HER PRISONER. 






























































































































































































































mother, but in this hill there is just 
one. 

The Queen is standing in the middle 
of the chamber. She is much larger 
than the worker ants about her. They 
are cleaning her, feeding her, combing 
her, attending to all her wants. 

But at the same time they are really 
keeping her prisoner. For the Queen is 
never permitted to leave the ant hill. 
She never sees the sun or the sky. She 
always lives underground. Her only 
task in life is to lay eggs so that the ant 
colony will not die. She may live many 
years, but she will never do any other 
work. 

Years ago, maybe five or six years ago, 
she was a princess in some other ant hill. 
She and the other princesses were differ¬ 
ent from the young worker ants. Some¬ 
day they would be queens. That was 
why they were fed better food than the 
workers. That was why they had no 

23 


work to do. All the time there were 
servants feeding them, nursing them, 
caring for them. All they did was eat 
and rest and play with their brothers, 
the princes. 

At last the wedding day came. The 
princes and princesses were ready to 



EACH PRINCE AND PRINCESS GREW BEAUTIFUL FILMY WINGS. 


leave the ant hill. Each of them had 
grown beautiful filmy wings. None of 
the workers or soldiers had such wings. 
Only princes and princesses had them. 

Out in the open air, in the sunshine 
that she had never seen before, the prin¬ 
cess spread her wings. Round about, 

24 


princes and princesses were streaming 
from other ant hills. The air was full of 
silvery wings. 

Higher and higher flew our tiny 
princess, dancing her wedding dance. 
High in the air she met her prince. 

All the princesses would have long and 
full lives ahead of them. But not the 
princes. The honeymoon was over. 
There was no further use for them. The 
workers in their ant hills would not let 
them return, for the princes did not know 
how to work. Before the wedding the 
workers were willing to support them. 
But now they would simply be a drain 
on the colony. 

Because they did not know how to 
work, the princes could not find food for 
themselves. Because they did not know 
how to defend themselves, they were 
helpless before their enemies. Their 
honeymoon had a terrible ending. Many 
of them were eaten by birds before the 

25 


day was over. If they were not eaten, 
they soon starved to death. 

BEGINNING OF THE ANT COLONY 

Although her mate died, our princess 
was very busy. Her honeymoon had 
carried her far from her old home, and 
she must look for a place to build a new 
one. When she found a spot to her 
liking, she began to dig a hole in the 
ground. 

Very soon the new Queen found that 
the wings that had carried her on her 
wedding flight were heavy and uncom¬ 
fortable. They had served their purpose. 
Now they were in the way, so she broke 
them off. 

Little by little she burrowed deeper 
and deeper into the ground. When she 
was deep enough, she sealed the opening 
to her nest. There in the dark she curled 
up and waited. She was preparing to 
lay her eggs. 

26 


When the eggs were laid, she waited 
a while longer. She didn’t eat anything 
or drink anything. Then one day the 
little eggs broke open. Out came a lot 
of little live white things without heads 
or legs. They looked like tiny worms. 
These were the larvae that would later 
turn into slim strong ants. 

To feed the larvae, the Queen laid 
more eggs and mashed them into a tasty 
dish. After a while the larvae began to 
spin cocoons, just as caterpillars do. Now 
they were no longer larvae. They were 
pupae. Their cocoons were like baby 
blankets. In the cocoons the pupae slept 
for several weeks while their bodies grew 
and changed. 

At last the cocoons began to open. 
Weak as she was from lack of food, the 
Queen helped the new-born ants out into 
the world. Then she laid more eggs to 
feed them. The young ants were still 
pale and yellowish. Their bodies would 

27 


not become dark until they went out into 
the sunshine. 

For a short time the new ants did noth¬ 
ing but rest. But they were all worker 
ants, and very soon they began to get 
busy. First they dug their way into the 
open air. Then they went out to find 
food for their mother. They brought her 
this food quickly, for she would die if she 
were left without it much longer. Then 
some of them set to work to dig more 
tunnels and more rooms, so there would 
be space for many more ants. Their life 
of hard work had begun. They would 
live perhaps four years, and they would 
do nothing but work, work, work, every 
waking moment of that time. 

Strong and well fed again, the Queen 
laid more eggs. Some of the older ants 
took up the duties of nursing. It was 
their work to carry the larvae and the 
pupae out of the ant hill for sun baths 
to make them grow faster. They brought 
28 


the larvae food, and helped the young 
ants to come out of their cocoons. Soon 
there were hundreds of eggs hatching. 
The family was beginning to grow. 

At first only workers hatched from the 
eggs. But later the Queen laid special 
kinds of eggs, which hatched into winged 
princes and princesses. The ant colony 
was complete. 

INDOOR WORK 

Not far from the Queen’s chamber are 
the nurseries. Here the little larvae are 
being fed. The nurses are giving them 
drops of honeydew. Then they begin to 
clean the baby ants with their tongues. 
From the baby ants’ skin comes a very 
sweet fat. No wonder the nurses like to 
feed and clean them! 

Outside the nurseries, the halls are as 
busy as the streets of a city. Ants hurry 
to and fro, some carrying food, some 
carrying dirt, some on their way to work. 

29 


Once in a while an ant that has been 
doing indoor work stops a dairy maid 
returning full of honey. With its feelers 
the indoor worker tells the dairy maid 
that it is hungry. Out of the dairy 
maid’s public stomach comes a delicious 
drop of honey, which is lapped up by the 
other. Then both ants hurry on. 

Down the winding halls are some rooms 
into which the dairy maids go with their 
loads of honeydew. When they come out 
they are no longer swollen. What has 
happened to the honeydew? 

A peek into one of those shows some¬ 
thing strange. Hanging from the ceiling 
are what seem to be bags as large and 
round as grapes. The dairy maids, 
climbing the walls, are pouring into these 
bags their loads of sweets. 

But now a closer look shows that these 
bags are not bags at all. They are ants! 
Their public stomachs are big and round 
with honeydew. They are ant bankers. 

30 



HANGING FROM THE CEILING ARE WHAT SEEM TO BE BAGS, AS LARGE AND ROUND AS GRAPES 




















































They save the store of honey for the 
colony, just as a banker keeps money for 
people, until it is needed. When any 
ant wants something to eat, it can climb 
up to the ceiling of the honey storeroom, 
let one of the bankers know that it is 
hungry, and out comes a drop of honey- 
dew. 

Well, there must be storerooms for 
other food too. One way to find them is 
to follow the ants bearing seeds, and peep 
into the rooms where they go. Here on 
the ground are piles of seeds. The in¬ 
coming ants place their seeds on the 
piles, and hurry off to bring in more. 
All the time soldier ants are at work on 
the seeds, breaking away the shells with 
their powerful jaws and placing the meat, 
or kernels, on separate piles. Other ants 
carry the seed kernels into chambers 
where they are stored. 

As we can see by this time, every ant 
has a very special kind of work. Men 

32 


and women, and boys and girls, have 
special kinds of work, too. But there is 
a difference. Most people can change 
their jobs if they wish. Most ants can¬ 
not. Usually each does only one kind 
of work all its life. The Queen lays eggs. 
The workers support the colony. Be¬ 
sides farmers, dairy maids, nurses, bank¬ 
ers, seed-crushers, and packers, there are 
also street cleaners, house maids, watch¬ 
men, diggers, and builders. 

ENEMIES WITHIN THE CITY 

Except for the princes and princesses, 
every ant in the colony is earning its 
living and working hard. No worker 
ant is ever a loafer or an idler. But, 
just as happens among people, there are 
enemies ready to live on these hard¬ 
working ants. 

Outside there are bandits. But some 
enemies dare to live right within the ant 
hill. They are very small ants, and what 

33 


sly little fellows they are! They tunnel 
their rooms and halls right alongside 
those of the worker ants. They make 
small openings from their halls into the 
halls of the ant hill. Then, when it 
seems safe, they creep into the store 
rooms of the larger ants, and carry food 
back into their own tunnels. The large 
ants cannot follow because the openings 
are too small for them to creep through. 

These little ants act much as mice do 
in the homes of people. But they are by 
no means the worst enemies that the 
ants could have. Some ant hills are 
bothered by strange insects known as 
traveling bars because they give out a 
sweet liquid. They are like the bars, or 
counters, at which people buy drinks and 
sweets. The ants become very fond of 
the liquid given to them by the traveling 
bars, and they feed the bars instead of 
storing food for their own colony. Some¬ 
times whole ant colonies become poor, or 

34 


even die out, because of traveling bars. 
So our ant hill can be counted very lucky 
when it is bothered only by such things 
as little mice-ants. 

WAR 

But the day comes when the ant hill 
is attacked by its worst enemies — other 
ants. One afternoon the scouts and 
guards posted around the ant hill come 
running to the entrance. They bang 
their heads in a certain way against the 
walls of the tunnel. This banging carries 
a message to the ants inside. It is a 
danger signal! "Red ants! Red ants!” 
That is what the guards are telling. The 
message is carried through the walls, 
taken up by other ants and repeated, 
and in an instant all the ants in the hill 
have been warned. 

At once all regular work stops. The 
colony must be saved. Guards are placed 
at the entrance. The Queen, the ant 

35 


'*1 



WHEN THE RED ANTS COME, EVERYTHING IS CARRIED DEEP 

INTO THE HILL. 


cows, the stores of food — everything is 
carried deep down into the hill. But it 
is the eggs and larvae and pupae that 

36 

































are most carefully hidden, as far below 
ground as the tunnels go. For the red 
ants come mainly to steal eggs and baby 
ants. Red ants are fighter ants. They 
do not live by working. They have other 
ants to do their work. When they do 
not have enough slaves to bring food for 
them, they go out to capture more. They 
carry off the eggs and larvae and pupae, 
so that when these become full-grown 
ants they will be used to the red ants 
and will work for them as they would 
for their own kind. 

Now the ants have done all they can. 
Most of them try to run away to hide 
until the attack is over, for they stand 
little chance against the powerful fighter 
ants. 

Suddenly the red enemies are upon 
the hill. They fall upon the fleeing work¬ 
ers. Many of the workers have their 
legs and feelers torn off. Some have 
their heads torn off, and their bodies live 

37 


for hours afterward in squirming agony. 

The red ants break past the guards 
that are holding the entrance. Into the 
hill they go, fighting their way through 
the tunnels. And now there is nothing 
to keep them from carrying off whatever 
they can find. 

When the red ants have gone at last, 
there are few signs of life around the 
hill. They have left destruction behind 
them. Many of the eggs and young ones 
are gone. The ground is littered with 
wounded bodies. 

Those ants that managed to escape 
returned. Some of the wounded stir, 
begin to move, and crawl wearily to help 
others worse off than themselves. There 
is a great deal of work to be done. 

First they make certain that their 
Queen is not harmed. Then the young 
ants and eggs that remain must be tended 
more carefully than ever, for the colony 
has lost many of its workers. The battle- 

38 


field must be cleaned. The dead must 
be carried to the cemetery. Tunnels, 
which have been broken in places, must 
be rebuilt. 


SLAVERY 

In this case the red ants just attacked 
and took the slaves they wanted. But 
sometimes worker ants become the slaves 
of red ants in another way. And the 
second way is much worse for the colony. 

This is how things might have hap¬ 
pened. One day, while all the worker 
ants are busy at their tasks, a strange 
Queen ant slips unnoticed into the ant 
hill. Along the halls she goes until she 
comes to the rightful Queen’s chambers. 
She enters, but for some reason the Queen 
does not give the danger signal. Perhaps 
this strange Queen has already got the 
smell of the ant hill on her. At any rate, 
the two Queens seem to be getting along 
in a friendly way. In a little while the 

39 


stranger Queen is on the rightful Queen’s 
back, caressing her head with her feelers. 

Now that seems very nice until we 
know the real state of affairs. Because 
that wicked stranger isn’t really just 
caressing the Queen’s head. She had 
begun by doing that, and the Queen liked 
it. But now — and who knows whether 
it hurts or not — the invader is — nipping 
the Queen’s head off! 

Now the old Queen lies dead, but 
strangely enough, all the other ants keep 
right on working as before. They even 
let the new Queen rule in the place of 
the old one. 

All this is very puzzling. It seems 
that death does not disturb ants as it 
does people. When an ant dies, it is 
carried to the cemetery, and that’s all 
there is to it. The life in the colony 
goes on. There is no excitement unless 
something happens that may harm the 
whole colony. It may seem that the 

40 


death of the Queen Mother — the Queen 
that had founded the colony — would be 
a great blow for that very reason. But 
to the ants the new Queen seems as good 
as the old one. She has the ant-hill 
smell on her. She will lay eggs and the 
colony will go on growing as before. 

But there is one thing that ants can¬ 
not realize, because they do not have 
minds and cannot think as people can. 
They have been fooled by this stranger, 
simply because she smells all right. She 
is really a red ant. When she begins 
to lay eggs, the eggs hatch into red ants. 
And the red ants make slaves of the 
real builders of the colony. 

They won’t do a bit of work for them¬ 
selves. They have to be fed and cleaned 
and tended, just as if all of them were 
princesses. They are parasites, the kind 
of insects that live on others. 

After a while there are so many para¬ 
site ants that the ant hill has a hard time 

41 


to keep going. Before this the black 
ants had done rather well, since everyone 
was working. But now half of the colony 
are idle and the other half have to feed 
and tend both themselves and their 
masters. So the red ants have to go out 
from time to time and attack other hills 
to bring home more slaves. 

We might expect that the slaves would 
fight against their masters. They have 
the strength to do this if they would. 
But ants do not want freedom as people 
do. They do not understand the reason 
for their troubles. They go right on 
working. 

WINTER 

Luckily, this is only what might have 
happened to our ant hill. And so, while 
the attack of the red ants was a terrible 
thing, the colony is not so badly off as 
it might have been. 

There are only a pitiful few of the 


42 


workers left, and only a few eggs and 
young ones. The colony must be built 
up again. So, when the wedding day 
comes for the princes and princesses of 
the countryside, our ants are on the 
watch. They must capture as many 
young Queens as they can and take them 
back to the ant hill. They used to need 
only one Queen. But now the more 
Queens they have, the more eggs there 
will be, and the more ants will hatch. 

And so, by the end of the summer, the 
ant colony is almost as well off as it had 
been before. 

Now winter comes. The work of 
collecting food stops. The cows are 
dragged in out of the cold and carried 
far down into the barns. The barns are 
tunneled out right around the roots of 
a corn plant. So all winter the cows can 
feed on the corn-plant juice, while the 
ants tend them, just as any man would 
do on his dairy farm. 


43 


For the most part, the ants sleep 
through the winter, staying down in the 
winter living rooms deep in the ant city 
where it is warmer. When spring comes 
again, most of them are still alive and 
well. The dead are carried above ground 
to the ant cemetery. The living ants go 
out into the sunshine and fresh air to 
work and grow strong again after their 
long stay underground. 

CLOSE RELATIVES 

This is the story of only one ant hill. 
It tells very little of all there is to know 
about the ant kingdom. There are about 
thirteen thousand different kinds of ants! 
They live in many different parts of the 
world and on many different kinds of 
food. Some eat living insects. Some eat 
dead ones. Some eat fruit, and some 
eat vegetables or grain. Some even eat 
tiny mushrooms that they grow in under¬ 
ground gardens. What the ants eat 

44 


depends on the food that they can get 
where they live. 

Just as different ants eat different 
kinds of food, so they can build different 
kinds of houses. Some build entirely 



THIS IS THE TERRIBLE BLIND DRIVER ANT, BEFORE WHOM 
WHOLE VILLAGES FLEE. 


underground. Some build hills of dirt 
above the ground. Some bore through 
dead trees. In some very hot countries 
ants build balls of earth high up in trees. 
Then they plant seeds of certain flowers 

45 


there, and as the roots spread out, the 
ants tunnel their halls and chambers in 
the balls of earth. High up in their 
tree-top home they live pleasantly, safe 
from floods. 

The ants we find in our country some¬ 
times annoy us when they get into our 
homes, or into our food on picnics. But 
we are not afraid of them. Yet in Africa 
there is a kind of ant that is really 
dangerous. These terrible blind driver 
ants move in great armies, millions to¬ 
gether, over the country. They eat 
everything before them — insects, snakes, 
lions, elephants, and even people. Some¬ 
times whole villages must flee to escape 
them. 

But no matter where they are and 
what kind they are, all ants are alike in 
certain ways. All of them live in colo¬ 
nies, and all of them have a social life. 
Always they are clean, and most of them 
are hard-working. We can find many 

46 


things about them to admire. It is not 
surprising that for hundreds of years 
men have pointed to the ant as a shining 
example for people to follow. 



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